document_title: List of Home and Away characters (2018)

question_text: who plays the female kidnapper in home and away

text: List of Home and Away characters (2018)

text: Dean Thompson[edit]

text:
Dean ThompsonHome and Away characterPortrayed by
Patrick O'ConnorDuration
2018–First appearance
1 February 2018 (2018-02-01)Introduced by
Lucy AddarioClassification
Present; regularProfileOccupation
Summer Bay Auto assistantHome
Pier Flat

text: Dean Thompson, played by Patrick O'Connor, made his first appearance on 1 February 2018.[2] O'Connor's casting and character details were announced on 13 January 2018. The actor began filming his first scenes five months prior to the announcement.[2] He had previously auditioned for other characters, and came close to securing the roles, before being cast as Dean. This is O'Connor's first acting role.[2] Of joining the show, he stated "Home and Away is obviously known as a launch pad for many actors’ careers. Obviously going into the type of role that this is, being a River Boy and there being a story there already that is so big and well known, it means there is a legacy there to play around with and being a bad boy on the show is exciting."[2]

text: Dean is a member of the show's River Boys group, who were introduced in 2011 with the arrival of the Braxton brothers.[2] The character's appearance was first teased in a trailer showcasing some of the upcoming 2018 storylines.[1] Dean was branded "the new bad boy of Summer Bay" by Jonathon Moran of The Daily Telegraph.[2] While O'Connor described him as "cheeky" and said that he loves AFL. The actor added that he likes that his character has tattoos, as he has always wanted one.[2]

text: Martin Ashford (George Mason) contacts Dean and the River Boys surf gang to help him find Robbo (Jake Ryan), who he holds responsible for the death of Kat Chapman (Pia Miller) and his unborn son. Dean sends Taz (Jerome Meyer) to search the cottage Robbo was last seen at, and the others to spread the word that they are on the look out for him. Dean and Ash go to Salt, where Taz and some others disrupt the wake. Ash orders Dean and the others out, and they split up to search the local pubs and bars, before returning to Salt. Dean recognises his former girlfriend Willow Harris (Sarah Roberts) when she turns up. The following day, he asks her where she has been and invites her for a drink to catch up. One night while having a bonfire with Willow, Dean has a seizure after drinking home brew beer.

text: Colby Thorne[edit]

text:
Colby ThorneHome and Away characterPortrayed by
Tim FranklinDuration
2018–First appearance
6 February 2018Introduced by
Lucy AddarioClassification
Present; regularProfileOccupation
Senior constableHome
Pier flat
showFamilyHalf-sisters
Bella Nixon

text: Colby Thorne,[3] played by Tim Franklin, made his first appearance on 6 February 2018.[4] Franklin's casting was confirmed in December 2017, after he was photographed filming scenes at Palm Beach, the show's outdoor filming location.[4][5] Franklin previously appeared in the show in 2015 as Azza Mason.[6] He learned from his agent that he had secured the role of Colby on his 27th birthday. He stated, "My agent sang 'Happy Birthday', but changed my name to Colby. When I heard it, I jumped out of my seat and screamed – it was the best gift."[4]

text: Colby is Summer Bay's new police officer.[5] Franklin said Colby had "a turbulent upbringing", which led him to join the police force. He told Tamara Cullen of TV Week, "I believe that any character has to come from a reality within myself. We've both had traumas and heartache in our past – as we all have – so I try to bring as much of myself to the role."[4] The actor admitted that he was initially "daunted" about playing a police officer.[4] Colby is a potential love interest for Jasmine Delaney (Sam Frost) and a former member of the River Boys surf gang.[4] Cullen branded Colby "tall, handsome and confident" and thought he was "bound to attract attention."[4]

text: Colby appears outside the Summer Bay Surf Club and helps Mason Morgan (Orpheus Pledger) fight off River boys Taz (Jerome Meyer) and Bluey (Alex Jewson). He is almost arrested by Sergeant Phillip McCarthy (Nicholas Cassim), but then reveals himself to be the Bay's new senior constable.

text: Lance Salisbury[edit]

text:
Lance SalisburyHome and Away characterPortrayed by
Angus McLarenFirst appearance
17 April 2018 (2018-04-17)Introduced by
Lucy AddarioClassification
Present; recurringProfileOccupation
Federal agent

text: Lance Salisbury, played by Angus McLaren, made his first appearance on 17 April 2018.[7] McLaren's casting and character details were announced on 16 April 2018. Of joining the cast, McLaren commented, "It's very exciting. It hit home for me when I walked into the Diner and all the characters I've grown up watching were there."[7] McLaren was reunited with his former Packed to the Rafters co-star James Stewart, who plays Justin Morgan.[7] Lance is a federal agent and best friend of Robbo (Jake Ryan). Lance is involved with the circumstances surrounding Robbo's amnesia and he helps out as the "mystery slowly gets unpacked."[7] Lance also wants his friend to get justice.[7]

text: After Robbo is brought in to an AFP base, Lance helps him to recall his memories and identity. Lance explains that Robbo's real name is Ryan Shaw and that he is a federal agent, whose family were killed when he began investigating corruption in the force. Robbo went undercover as Beckett Reid and he was sent to Summer Bay to protect Kat Chapman (Pia Miller). The federal police were unsure whether Robbo's amnesia was real or not, so they did not intervene. Lance drives Robbo back to Summer Bay and tells him that all the charges against him have been dropped. He also returns all of Robbo's belongings, including his birth certificate, passport, driver's licence and credit cards. Lance advises Robbo to think about returning to AFP before he leaves.

text: Ebony Easton[edit]

text:
Ebony EastonHome and Away characterPortrayed by
Cariba HeineFirst appearance
19 April 2018 (2018-04-19)Introduced by
Lucy AddarioClassification
Present; recurringProfileOther names
Ebony HardingLisa HardingOccupation
Bartender
showFamilyMother
Hazel EastonBrothers
Boyd Easton

text: Ebony Easton (also Harding), played by Cariba Heine, made her first appearance on 19 April 2018.[8] The character and Heine's casting was confirmed during a trailer which aired before the show's break for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.[8] Heine sent a taped audition to the casting directors while she was overseas. Weeks later, she learnt via email that she had secured the role of Ebony.[9] Ebony was introduced as the show's new villain, who wants revenge on some of the residents of Summer Bay. She is connected with the kidnapping of Justin Morgan's (James Stewart) daughter Ava Gilbert (Grace Thomas).[8] Eliza Velk of Yahoo7 Be speculated that Ebony also has a connection to criminal Boyd Easton (Steve Le Marquand) and commented, "Either way something bad is brewing in the bay."[8] Heine later said that she was excited to play a villain, adding "She's pretty despicable, so I hope she gets a rise out of people!"[9]

text: Ebony goes to Northern Districts Hospital and pretends to be a doctor, after learning her brother Boyd Easton has been brought in. After over hearing that her brother has died, she goes to see her mother, Hazel Easton (Genevieve Lemon) and they both swear revenge on the people who are responsible for Boyd's death. Ebony comes to Summer Bay and begins trying to get to know Colby Thorne (Tim Franklin), the police constable who shot Boyd. She slashes her car tyre, hoping Colby will help her change it, but he has to leave and Hunter King (Scott Lee) helps out. Hazel tells her to hurry up and make everyone pay, but Ebony replies that she wants to have some fun and plans to go after Willow Harris (Sarah Roberts) and Justin Morgan too. Hazel continues to doubt Ebony's plan. Ebony brings her car to Justin's business Summer Bay Auto for a service, and later stages a car crash, hoping to discredit the garage.

text: Ty Anderson[edit]

text:
Ty AndersonHome and Away characterPortrayed by
Darius WilliamsFirst appearance
7 May 2018 (2018-05-07)Introduced by
Lucy AddarioClassification
Present; recurringProfileOccupation
StudentHome
33 Saxon Avenue

text: Ty Anderson, played by Darius Williams, made his first appearance on 7 May 2018.[10] The character and casting details were announced in the 21–27 April 2018 issue of Inside Soap.[11] Williams began filming his six-week guest stint from October 2017.[10]

text: Actor Ray Meagher (Alf Stewart) confirmed that the producers would be introducing a gay character during a February 2018 interview. He stated, "Our writers do try to keep abreast with the times, so there is an interesting character coming in. I won't tell you too much more about him, about how he works out or what happens, but that is being addressed."[12] Ty is the first gay character to be introduced to Home and Away since 2009, when the show featured a same-sex relationship between Charlie Buckton (Esther Anderson) and Joey Collins (Kate Bell), which was criticised by conservative groups and parents.[11][12] Ty is fostered by John Palmer (Shane Withington) and Marilyn Chambers (Emily Symons). He also befriends Raffy Morrison (Olivia  Deeble) during his time in Summer Bay.[11]

text: After his grandfather gets sick, Ty's case worker brings him to Summer Bay to stay with John Palmer and Marilyn Chambers. Ty refuses the food on offer, as he has already eaten, and later goes out on his own for a walk. Ty appears disinterested during a talk about his new school, leading Raffy Morrison to call him out for being rude to everyone. When Ty tells her that he does not plan on staying long and will be gone when he turns sixteen, Raffy tells him to leave. Ty befriends Ryder Jackson (Lukas Radovich) when they pair up for an assignment during Ty's first day at school. Raffy accuses Ty of taking advantage of John and Marilyn, while he counters that she is jealous of not being the focus of all their attention. When Raffy sees Ty throwing away the packed lunch Marilyn prepared for him, she confronts him again about his ungrateful attitude towards the Palmers. Ty tells her that they will never love her like their own child and Raffy slaps him. Roo Stewart (Georgie Parker) ask them to apologise to each other, but they refuse and Ty walks out of the office. Raffy later finds him on the beach and apologises for slapping him. She asks him if they can have a fresh start and they finally bond, with Ty vowing to make more of an effort with the Palmers.

text: Ty stands up for Raffy when another student purposely bumps her, making her drop her money. They continue to get on well, until she asks to listen to his music and they argue again. Ty later decides to share his music with her. While Raffy is listening to one of his newer tracks, Ty kisses her and she kisses him back. John and Raffy's brother Justin Morgan (James Stewart) walk in on them and Justin orders Raffy to move home. Ty apologises to John and Marilyn for jeopardising their chance at fostering. Ty later meets Raffy at the beach and they kiss again. They start dating. Ty's friendship with Ryder grows when he helps Ryder out at the juice bar. While helping Coco to plan her sister's wedding, Ty invites Ryder to listen to his latest song. Ty then tells Ryder that he likes him, before attempting to kiss him. Ryder asks Ty to meet him the following day to talk. Ty initially says that he mistook Ryder for Raffy, as he was tired. Ryder tells him it is okay if he is gay, but Ty reacts angrily and physically pushes Ryder away several times. Ty refuses to speak to John, and later takes all his belongings and leaves. Ty falls down an embankment in the bush, and injures his head and ankle. He manages to call Ryder, who sends John and Alf Stewart to help rescue him. In the hospital, Ty admits to John and Marilyn that he is gay, and asks them to talk to Raffy, who is reacts angrily when she believes Ty was just using her.

text: Chelsea Campbell[edit]

text: Chelsea Campbell,[13] played by Ashleigh Brewer, will make her first appearance in 2018. Brewer's casting and character details were announced on 31 March 2018.[14] Brewer was in Los Angeles when she learned about the role, and she filmed an audition to send over to the Home and Away producers. After recording a second tape and sending it over, she learned that she had secured the role. The actress is contracted for six months.[14] Of joining the show, Brewer stated "I'm so excited about it. The character in particular is great and the storyline is fantastic. I'm very excited to dive into a show that is so long-standing and one that I know very well."[14]

text: Chelsea is a police officer, who has a connection to one of the established characters. Brewer commented that Chelsea would give the character "a real shock..."[14] She also called her character "extremely nice with a strong head on her shoulders", but added that Chelsea would cause some trouble.[14]

text: Others[edit]

text:
Date(s)

Character

Actor

Circumstances

29 January

Nurse

Kate Boladian[15]

The nurse informs Tori Morgan that someone is enquiring after Kat Chapman, who was brought into the hospital after a road traffic accident.

30 January

Odette

Romy Poulier[16]

Odette meets with Willow Harris to pay her for helping to prove that Odette's husband is a cheater. Odette asks Willow if she will do the same thing for her friend.

1 February

Nurse

Christina Falsone[17]

Leah Patterson asks the nurse where Jasmine Delaney is, as her room is empty. The nurse calls security after realising that she is missing.

1 February

Devera

Mia Karaz[18]

Kat Chapman's mother and brother attend her funeral.

Paulo

Christian Leiva Fuentes[17]

1 February

Minister

Richard Saunders[17]

The minister conducts Kat Chapman's funeral service.

1–22 February

Taz

Jerome Meyer[19]

Taz is a member of the River Boys, who comes to Summer Bay to help Martin Ashford to find Robbo. Dean Thompson sends Taz to search the cottage that Robbo was last seen at. When they return, Taz and the others disrupt the wake at Salt. Taz and Bluey go to Summer Bay Fit to question people about Robbo and Mason asks them to leave. Taz decides he and Bluey should take advantage of the free trial. Mason asks them to go when they continue harassing gym members and he squares up to Taz. Taz and Bluey approach Mason outside the Surf Club and they start a fight. Colby Thorne intervenes and Taz punches him. The police turn up and arrest Taz and Bluey. Taz later informs Ash that he and some of the River Boys spoke to a man at a service station who saw Robbo, and they decide to return to speak to him.

1–19 February

Bluey

Alex Jewson[19]

Bluey is a member of the River Boys, who comes to Summer Bay to help Martin Ashford find Robbo. Bluey and Taz go to Summer Bay Fit to question people about Robbo and Mason asks them to leave. Taz decides he and Bluey should take advantage of the free trial. Mason asks them to go when they continue harassing gym members and he manhandles Bluey. Taz and Bluey approach Mason outside the Surf Club and they start a fight. Colby Thorne intervenes and helps Mason, before the police turn up and arrest Bluey and Taz.

1 February

Jimmy

Kyle Hazebroek[20]

Jimmy tells Dean Thompson and Martin Ashford that he spoke to an old man, who gave Robbo a lift. Jimmy and Ash almost get into a fight.

8 February

Bushwalker

Adam Hedditch[21]

The bushwalker notices Robbo behind the wheel of a stationary car and calls the police, knowing he is a wanted man.

8 February

Ambulance Officer Karen

Jerusha Sutton[22]

Karen brings Justin Morgan to the hospital after he is involved in a car crash. She later helps Mason Morgan to treat and rescue Alf Stewart from a sink hole.

12 February

Lauren

Lianne Mackessy[23]

After finding a photograph of his family, amnesiac Robbo recalls the memory of his wife Lauren and their two children, Sophia and Lucas, celebrating his birthday. He thinks he remembers the day they all died in a car accident, but when Tori Morgan asks Colby Thorne to search for them, Colby finds out that they were all murdered in a home invasion.

Sophia

Ava Rose Bowen[24]

Lucas

Luca Rochaix[24]

19 February–

Dr Callan

Virginie Laverdure[25]

Dr Callan is Maggie Astoni's oncologist. She tells Maggie that they have caught her cancer early and it has not spread. Dr Callan also suggests starting a course of chemotherapy straight away to treat her high-grade B-cell lymphoma. Dr Callan meets with Maggie a few weeks later to inform her that her white cell count is up.

20–22 February

David

Jack Ellis[26]

David is Jasmine Delaney's former boyfriend. After stalking her for months, David finally shows up in Summer Bay and asks Hunter King for directions to the local caravan park. When Jasmine returns to her caravan, she finds David sitting on her bed and he tells her they need to talk. David insists that he and Jasmine leave the Bay together. He takes her up to Summer Bay House to return her caravan keys to Leah Patterson. Leah insists that they both stay for lunch. After a heated conversation, Leah and Jasmine try to escape, but David grabs them and tells them to stay. Ryder Jackson returns home and David holds him, Leah and Jasmine hostage. David allows Leah to order a pizza for him and Jasmine, and she adds an SOS message to the receipt. Shortly after, Colby Thorne arrives and arrests David. Jasmine visits David to tell him that what he did was not out of love, while David protests that they had something.

26 February–

Barry Johnson

Brad McMurray [27]

Barry accuses his former employee Dean Thompson of stealing his tools, while Dean accuses him of withholding his wages. Dean provokes Barry into a fight, which is broken up by Martin Ashford and Justin Morgan. Ash later calls Barry and arranges for him to pay Dean, who gives the tools back. Barry is hired to fix the sinkhole at the local high school. He tells Maggie Astoni that work will have to take place during classes, but it will be safe. Barry interviews Maggie's husband Ben Astoni for a job and later offers it to him. Barry warns Ben about talking to his wife while on the job. Ben tells Barry that Maggie has cancer, and while Barry sympathises with Ben's situation, he tells him that he should have considered that before taking the job. When Ben has to leave early, he tells Barry that he quits.

28 February–

Professor Pickford

Lisa Kay[28]

Professor Pickford is a psychiatrist, who meets with Tori Morgan at Salt to discuss Robbo, who has been suffering from amnesia. Tori takes Professor Pickford to the local police station to meet Robbo. Professor Pickford tells Sergeant Phillip McCarthy that she will be endorsing Tori's evaluation of Robbo, and writes a statement for the magistrate. a couple of weeks later, Robbo has a therapy session with Professor Pickford. He refuses to talk about his relationships and leaves.

8 March

Joseph

Ishak Issa[29]

Joseph notices Mason Morgan at a university party and comes over to say hello. He asks if Mason is coming back to study medicine, and they agree to catch up soon.

Li Xue

Indiana Kwong[30]

Li Xue helps Mason Morgan to re-enrol at Yabbie Creek University. She tells him that he needs to sort out his hospital placement first, as he has been suspended from Northern Districts.

14 March

Dr Lucas

Grant Cartwright[31]

Dr Lucas treats Dean Thompson after he is brought in following a collapse. When he suffers hallucinations, Dr Lucas asks Willow Harris and Colby Thorne if Dean has taken something, as he does not believe that Dean has just been drinking beer.

14 March

Julian Wells

Tahki Saul[32]

Julian is Ben Astoni's solicitor. He tells Ben that he is eighth on the list for that day's court hearings, but he will be out in time to make his wife's hospital appointment. When Ben decides to leave, he advises him that if he misses his hearing he will be facing a fine and possibly jail time.

20–21 March

Ambo Ken

Joshua Morton[33]

Ken tends to Martin Ashford after he is crushed by a car, and assists Tori Morgan in administering treatment.

21 March

Lisa Petrov

Kate Williams[34]

Lisa is a lawyer hired to represent Robbo. When she suggests that he should plead insanity, Robbo refuses and fires her.

22 March–4 April

Kurt Adams

Tiriel Mora[35]

Kurt is a lawyer, who meets with Tori Morgan and Robbo to discuss taking on Robbo's case, which Kurt hopes will bring him wealthy clients, as it is high profile. He gets in contact with the DPP to find out what evidence they have on Robbo, and tells Robbo and Tori that they have CCTV footage of Robbo's escape from the police station and assault on Martin Ashford. Kurt agrees to take on the case. When Kurt decides that they should say Kat Chapman was a crooked officer, Robbo grabs Kurt's shirt and tells him to shut up. Kurt tells Tori that he quits, but later changes his mind when Tori suggests that he finds another defence for Robbo. Kurt plans to eliminate as many of the charges against Robbo as he can, including those attributed to Beckett Reid. Kurt wants Ash to testify that it was Kat's idea to release Robbo, but Tori refuses to ask him. Kurt soon learns that Robbo is being charged with Dylan Carter's murder. He advises Robbo not to testify, but Robbo insists that he will. At the conclusion of the trial, Robbo is taken away from the federal police.

26 March

Theresa Clarke

Debbie Zukerman[36]

Theresa is an administrative assistant at Summer Bay High, who brings Maggie Astoni some public liability forms to fill in and a list of problems that she needs to look into. Theresa later tells Maggie that the department wants to discuss some timetables and that the builder has left early.

27 March

Gordon

Haris Mirza[37]

Gordon agrees to pair up with Raffy Morrison for an assignment during their English class.

3–4 April

Samantha Woodhouse

Charlotte Cashion[38]

Samantha approaches Robbo outside the courthouse and poses as a journalist asking questions about his trial. The following day, Samantha approaches Robbo again and he tells her to stop calling him Beckett Reid. She then contacts someone to let them know that something has changed and to get things ready to go. Samantha later interrupts the trial, revealing that she is a federal agent and takes Robbo into custody.

3 April

Prosecutor

Lucy Bell[38]

The prosecutor in Robbo's trial tries to convince the jury that Robbo is guilty of murder and assault.

Magistrate

Richie Singer[38]

The magistrate in Robbo's trial. Robbo's lawyer Kurt Adams argues that Martin Ashford should not testify for the prosecution, but the magistrate allows it. He also allows the defence's medical evidence about Robbo's amnesia. Before the magistrate can hear the jury's verdict on the first charge, federal agents interrupt and take Robbo into custody. The magistrate tells Kurt that they can not stop them and puts the court in recess.

Court Officer

Ben Dalton[38]

The court officer calls everyone into the court for Robbo's trial. He reads out the charges and later calls Martin Ashford to testify.

Foreperson

Karina Bracken[39]

The foreperson tells the magistrate that the jury has reached a verdict.

Dr Lucy Dobson

Danielle Baynes[40]

Dr Dobson informs the Astoni family that Ziggy Astoni has gastroenteritis and is not suffering a reaction to the stem cell injections she is taking. Dr Dobson tells Ziggy that they will keep her in overnight to rehydrate her and then collect the stem cells when she is better.

3 April–25 June

Hazel Easton

Genevieve Lemon[40]

Hazel brings Ava Gilbert a snack and tells her that her father is working late, so they have agreed that Ava can stay with Hazel for the night. Hazel later meets with Ava's father Justin Morgan to collect a ransom of $25,000. She allows Justin to briefly speak to Ava, before demanding the money, but he refuses to hand it over until she tells him where Ava is. Hazel is spooked by a noise caused by Colby Thorne and Ben Murray and she drives off. Willow Harris recognises a description of Hazel and reveals that she is Boyd Easton's mother, who is out for revenge. Boyd goes to collect the ransom, and when Hazel calls him, Sergeant McCarthy informs her that Boyd was injured during a police operation. Hazel sends her daughter, Ebony Easton to find out more information and she tells Hazel that Boyd died. They both swear revenge on those involved in Boyd's death. Hazel wants Ebony to hurry up and make Colby pay for killing Boyd, but Ebony asks her mother to have patience with her plan. Hazel continues to ask Ebony for updates. Colby and Justin later track Hazel down to a motel in Mangrove River, but she escapes before they get to her. She stays with Ebony in Summer Bay. As Ebony executes her revenge plan, she kills Hazel to set up Robbo.

16 April

Newsreader

Natalie Barr[41]

Natalie Barr reads out an appeal for witnesses who have seen missing child Ava Gilbert.

18 April

Nurse

Adeline Lee[42]

The nurse attends to Ziggy Astoni as she undergoes stem cell collection.

19 April

Police Officer

Murray Scarce[43]

The police officer and his colleagues raid Hazel Easton's house looking for Ava Gilbert.

30 April

Rick

Ben Purser[44]

Rick welcomes Ben Astoni to workforce. He advises him to turn off his phone, as their boss Barry Johnson might fire him if he sees Ben using it. At the end of the day, Rick persuades Ben to have a drink with the crew at Salt.

3 May

Dominic Pfeiffer

Uncredited[45]

Dominic is an inspector from NSW Fair Trading, who checks over Summer Bay Auto, following an accident with Ebony Easton's car. Dominic tells Justin Morgan that after looking over the car, he found the brake line was frayed and covered in fluid. As it should have been picked up on, Dominic recommends the garage is closed while Fair Trading investigates work place practices.

7 May

Catherine

Lisbeth Kennelly[46]

Catherine is Ty Anderson's case worker. She brings him to Summer Bay to meet his foster parents John Palmer and Marilyn Chambers.

9–10 May

Gus

Alex Nicholas[47]

Gus moors his boat at the pier and unloads several boxes. Hunter King asks him to move his boat, as a barge needs to dock there, but Gus tells him to leave. Robbo sees Gus push Hunter and comes down to confront him and his two associates, knowing that they are not unloading fish. A fight breaks out and Hunter suffers a head injury. Robbo performs a citizen's arrest on Gus, who is taken away by the police.

23–24 May

Jason

Elijah Williams[48]

Jason is a AFP recruit. Robbo plays a joke on during a run, so he loses. Jason approaches Robbo, after learning that he is retraining, and asks him to talk to a few of the recruits about his experiences on the job. Jason tells Robbo that if he beats him on the beep test, Robbo has to talk to him about anything he wants to know. Robbo agrees and then beats Jason's time. Robbo later asks Jason why he wants to become a federal police officer and they both realise that they want to make a difference. Robbo then allows Jason to ask him anything.

23 May

Trainer

Steve Willis[49]

The trainer puts the AFP recruits through various exercises to test their fitness. He forces Robbo to do more sit-ups than the others, as he is undergoing specialist training.

31 May–

Dempsey

Sophie Don[50]

Dempsey attends a singles night at Salt and meets Mason Morgan. They sit down to talk and she learns that they both work at Northern Districts Hospital. Their date is interrupted by Hunter King and Olivia Fraser Richards who need advice from Mason, and Dempsey leaves.

31 May

Raj

Bali Padda[50]

Raj is paired with Olivia Fraser Richards at a singles night at Salt, while Suz meets Hunter King. After learning that she is a fashion designer, Raj tells Olivia that he works in sales at a clothes shop. Suz reveals she is a nutritionist when she stops Hunter from eating a snack that is high in fat. Hunter encourages her to relax and eat what they want. Neither Olivia or Hunter want to go on a date with Raj and Suz.

Suz

Bianca Magistro[50]


document_title: The Cat in the Hat (film)

question_text: who played the cat in the hat movie

question_tokens: who played the cat in the hat movie

root

text: The Cat in the Hat (film)

text: Plot[edit]

text: Conrad and Sally Walden live in the city of Anville with their mother, Joan. Joan works for neat-freak Hank Humberfloob, as a real estate agent, and is hosting an office party at her house. One day, she is called back to the office, leaving the kids with Mrs. Kwan, an elderly tired babysitter (after the previous one quit), and forbidding them to enter the living room, which is being kept pristine for the upcoming party. Joan is also dating their next-door neighbor, Larry Quinn, much to Conrad's dismay. Larry is constantly on the lookout for any mischief Conrad may be up to, as he wants nothing more than to send him away to military school, as Conrad has earned the reputation of "hot-headed trouble-maker", while his sister is characterized as "perfect and well-behaved".

tag: p

text: Once their mother leaves, Sally and Conrad meet an anthropomorphic humanoid and oversized talking cat with a red-and-white striped hat and a large red bow tie named the Cat in the Hat. The Cat wants them to learn to have fun but the children's pet fish doesn't want the Cat around when Joan is away. The Cat then leaves a trail of destruction across the house. In the process, he releases two trouble-making things, Thing 1 and Thing 2, from a crate that he explains is actually a portal to another world. The Cat tells Conrad that he only has one rule: never open the crate, then allows the Things to have fun, but they make a mess out of the house. Despite the Cat's warning, Conrad picks the lock on the crate. When the crate's lock attaches itself to the collar of the family dog, Nevins, Cat and the kids must go find him and the lock. They drive a super-powered car which Cat names it S.L.O.W. (Super Luxurious Omnidirectional Whatchamajigger) in search of Nevins and use Cat's magic hat. Conrad realizes that the Things always do the opposite to what they are told, and that this can be used to their advantage and has them stall Joan.

text: Meanwhile, Larry is revealed to be an unemployed slob with dentures, and is in financial debt, though claiming that he is a successful businessman in the hopes of marrying Joan for her money. Larry sees Nevins running across the street and tracks down Joan to tell her, but Things 1 and 2 have stalled her on the road, posing as police officers. Larry goes back to the house, telling Joan to meet him there.

text: By the time the kids and the Cat (and Larry) return to the house with the lock, a huge mess spills from the unlocked crate and enters the house, seemingly killing Larry in the process. They navigate their way through the oversized house and find the crate while cleaning up. The house is returned to its normal proportions but then immediately falls apart. The Cat confesses to the kids that he planned the whole day, including making not opening the crate his one rule as he knew Conrad could not resist. The kids angrily tell the Cat to leave the house. Conrad prepares to face the consequences when Joan comes home but Sally says she will share the blame. The Cat having overheard this happily returns to clean up the mess with a great cleaning contraption. named D.I.R.T. (Dynamic Industrial Renovating Tractormajigger) Afterwards, The Cat says goodbye and departs as Joan is arriving. Larry returns, revealing he survived when all was restored, thinking he has busted the kids, but when Joan sees the clean house (and a messy Larry), she does not believe Larry and dumps him. After the successful party, Joan spends quality time with her children and the film ends as the Cat and his Things walk off into the sunset.

text: Cast[edit]

text:
Mike Myers as the Cat in the Hat, a tall, anthropomorphic, wise-cracking cat with a Brooklyn accent who wears a special hat which reveals many magical abilities.
Spencer Breslin as Conrad Walden, Joan's destructive and misbehaved son.
Dakota Fanning as Sally Walden, Joan's dull, well-behaved, and rule-obeying daughter.
Kelly Preston as Joan Walden, Conrad and Sally's mother, and a workaholic real-estate agent.
Alec Baldwin as Lawrence "Larry" Quinn, the Waldens' pompous, lazy, unemployed next-door neighbor. He is revealed to be allergic to cats, steals food from the Waldens and gets away with it, and is determined to both marry Joan for her wealth and send Conrad to military school to straighten up his behavior.
Amy Hill as Mrs. Kwan, an elderly Taiwanese woman who gets hired to watch the kids, though she sleeps through her job. Her weight and sleep serves as a running gag. She sits down on the couch to watch brawling in Taiwanese parliament.
Sean Hayes as Mr. Hank Humberfloob, Joan's boss. Hayes is also the voice of the family fish.
Danielle Chuchran and Taylor Rice as Thing 1, and Brittany Oaks and Talia-Lynn Prairie as Thing 2; two gibbering trouble-making creatures that the Cat brings in with him. Dan Castellaneta provided the voices for both Things.
Steven Anthony Lawrence as Dumb Schweitzer. He whacks Cat in the testicles with a wooden baseball bat
Paris Hilton as a female club-goer
Bugsy as Nevins, the Waldens' pet dog. Frank Welker provided his voice.
Candace Dean Brown as a secretary who works for the Humberfloob Real Estate.
Daran Norris as the Astounding Products Announcer
Clint Howard as Kate the Caterer
Paige Hurd as Denise, who does not speak to Sally anymore, not long after she talked back to her. She never invited Sally to her birthday party either since Sally earlier stated that she told Denise not to speak to her anymore.
Stephen Hibbert as Jim McFinnigan
Roger Morrisey as Mr. Vompatatat
Victor Brandt as the Narrator, who tells the story; he is revealed to be the Cat using a voice-changer at the end.

tag: ul

text: Production[edit]

text: Development[edit]

text: DreamWorks Pictures acquired rights to the original book in 1997.[4] However, production did not originally start until after the 2000 Christmas/comedy film How the Grinch Stole Christmas, based on another Dr. Seuss book of the same name, became a commercial success. Brian Grazer, who was the producer of The Grinch, stated, "Because we grew up with these books, and because they have such universal themes and the illustrations ignite such fantasy in your mind as a child — the aggregation of all those feelings — it leaves an indelible, positive memory. And so when I realized I had a chance to convert first The Grinch and then, The Cat in the Hat, into movies, I was willing to do anything to bring them to the screen."[5] Grazer contacted Bo Welch over the phone with the offer to direct the film, and he accepted.[6] When production began, songs written by Randy Newman were dropped because they were deemed inferior. Newman's cousin, David Newman, composed the score for the film. Although Welch and a publicist for Myers denied it, several people said Myers had considerable input into the film's direction, telling some of the cast (co-stars Baldwin and Preston) how to perform their scenes.[7]

text: Casting[edit]

text: Tim Allen was originally planned to play the role of the Cat. The script would be originally based on a story conceived by Allen, who admitted that as a child he was afraid of Seuss' "mischievous feline" babysitter. Allen stated, "My dream is to give it the edge that scared me."[8] However, producers did not commission a screenplay until late February 2001, when Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer, and Dave Mandel (who were also writers on Seinfeld) were hired to write the script (replacing the original draft of the film that was written a few years before),[9] so the film would not be ready to shoot before the deadline. Allen was also committed to shooting Disney's The Santa Clause 2, which was also delayed because Allen wanted a script rewrite.[10] Due to a scheduling conflict with The Santa Clause 2,[11] he dropped out his role.[12] In March 2002, the role of the Cat was given to Mike Myers,[13] even though he had an argument with Grazer about starring in a cancelled Saturday Night Live skit named Dieter.[14] Myers stated in an interview that he was a long-time fan of the original Dr. Seuss book, and that it was the first book he ever read.[15]

text: Makeup and visual effects[edit]

text: Makeup for the character was designed by Steve Johnson. The Cat costume was made of angora and human hair and was fitted with a cooling system. To keep Myers cool during the outdoor shoots, a portable air conditioner was available that connected a hose to the suit between shots. The tail and ears were battery operated.[16] The Fish was considered somewhat of a unique character for Rhythm & Hues (responsible for some of the effects and animation in such films as Cats & Dogs, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and Scooby-Doo), in that the character had no shoulders, hips or legs, so all of the physical performance had to emit from the eyes, head and fin motion. Sean Hayes, who provided the voice for the Fish, found the role significantly different from his usual on-camera jobs; he did not know how the final animation would look, and all of his work took place alone in a sound booth.[17]

text: Filming[edit]

text: Prior to filming, giant props for the film were stolen from the set. Local police found the props vandalized in a mall car park in Pomona, California. The props were covered with graffiti. No arrests had been made, and filming was to start the next week.[18] Principal photography took place mostly in California from October 2002 until January 2003. The neighborhood and the town centre was filmed in a rural valley near Simi Valley, where 24 houses (each 26-feet square and 52-feet tall) were constructed.[19] The downtown area outdoor shots were filmed along a Pomona street where a number of antique and gift shops are located. The community decided not to redecorate after filming ended, so the surreal paint scheme and some of the signage could still be seen as it appears in the film. Because of so much smog in the area, the sky had to be digitally replaced with the cartoon-like sky and colours of the background had to be digitally fixed.

text: Music[edit]

text:
The Cat in the HatFilm score / Soundtrack album by David NewmanReleased
November 18, 2003Recorded
2002Genre
OrchestraLength
51:55Label
BMG Soundtracks

tag: table

text: The soundtrack was released on November 18, 2003.[20] It includes David Newman's score, plus a song by Smash Mouth ("Getting Better") and ("Hang On") that makes it the third film in a row playing a song in a film starring Mike Myers, after Shrek (2001)  and Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002). The soundtrack also includes a couple of songs performed by Mike Myers (the role of the Cat). Newman's score won a BMI Film Music Award.

text: Track listing[edit]

text: All music composed by David Newman, except as noted.

text: showTrack listingNo.TitleWriter(s)Length1."Main Title; The Kids" 8:072."Getting Better" (Performed by Smash Mouth)Lennon–McCartney2:243."The Cat" 3:504."Two Things - Couch Jumping - Lea..." 5:165."Military Academy Seduction" 3:026.Untitled 2:127."Surfer Cat - the Phunometer" 2:238."Fun, Fun, Fun" (Performed by Mike Myers)Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman2:389."The Contract" 1:5310."Oven Explodes - "Clean Up This Mess!"" 1:3611."Things Wreck the House" 2:5212."Larry the Slob" 3:1013."Birthday Party" 2:1114."S.L.O.W. Drive" 2:3215."Rescuing Nevins" 4:2716."Clean Up" (Performed by Mike Myers)Shaiman, Whitman0:2317."Hang On" (Performed by Smash Mouth)Scott Wittman3:00Total length:47:25

text: Release[edit]

text: Home media[edit]

text: The Cat in the Hat was released on VHS and DVD on March 16, 2004.[21] It features 16 deleted scenes, 20 outtake scenes, almost a dozen featurettes, and a "Dance with the Cat" tutorial to teach kids a Cat in the Hat dance.[22] On February 7, 2012, the film was released on Blu-ray.[23]

text: Reception[edit]

text: Box office[edit]

text: The Cat in the Hat opened theatrically on November 21, 2003 and earned $38,329,160 in its opening weekend, ranking first in the North American box office.[24] The film ended its theatrical run on March 18, 2004, having grossed $101,149,285 domestically and $32,811,256 overseas for a worldwide total of $133,960,541.[2]

text: Critical response[edit]

text: Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 10% "Rotten" rating based on 158 reviews with an average rating of 3.2/10. The website's consensus reads: "Filled with double entendres and potty humor, this Cat falls flat."[25] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 19 out of 100 based on 37 reviews indicating  "overwhelming dislike".[26] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale.[27]

text: Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film one star, stating, "Cat, another over-blown Hollywood raid on Dr. Seuss, has a draw on Mike Myers, who inexplicably plays the Cat by mimicking Bert Lahr in The Wizard of Oz." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 2 out of 4 stars. Although he praised the production design, he considered the film to be "all effects and stunts and CGI and prosthetics, with no room for lightness and joy".[28] Ebert and co-host Richard Roeper gave the film "Two Thumbs Down". Roeper said of Myers' performance that "Maybe a part of him was realizing as the movie was being made that a live-action version of The Cat in the Hat just wasn't a great idea." Ebert had the same problem with the film that he had with How the Grinch Stole Christmas, in that "If there is one thing I've learned from these two movies is that we don't want to see Jim Carrey as a Grinch, and we don't want to see Mike Myers as a cat. These are talented comedians, let's see them do their stuff, don't bury them under a ton of technology."

text: Concerns were also raised over the PG rating of the film with some critics, stating that it should have instead been rated PG-13 in relation to its high amount of adult content.[29]

text: Leonard Maltin in his Movie Guide gave it one and a half stars out of four saying that the "Brightly colored adaptation of the beloved rhyming book for young children is a betrayal of everything Dr. Seuss ever stood for, injecting potty humor and adult (wink-wink) jokes into a mixture of heavy-handed slapstick and silliness." Maltin also claimed that the film's official title which included Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat was "an official insult".[30]

text: Conversely, Jeffrey Lyons from NBC-TV enjoyed the film and considered it "enormously funny".[citation needed] Variety considered it "attractively designed, energetically performed and, above all, blessedly concise, this adaptation of one of the most popular American kids' books walks the safe side of surrealism with its fur-flying shenanigans. The younger the viewers, the better reactions are bound to be, while grownups will sit in varying states of bemusement".

text: Baldwin addressed complaints the film received because of its dissimilarity to the source material. He expressed a belief that a film is "an idea about something" and that because Dr. Seuss' work is so unique, making a feature-length film out of one of his stories would entail taking liberties and making broad interpretations.[31]

text: Awards and nominations[edit]

text:
Award

Subject

Nominee

Result

BMI Film Awards

Best Music

David Newman

Won

DFWFCA Awards

Worst Film

Won

Kids' Choice Awards

Favorite Movie Actor

Mike Myers

Nominated

Golden Raspberry Awards

Worst Actor of the Decade

Nominated

Worst Actor

Nominated

Worst Supporting Actor

Alec Baldwin

Nominated

Worst Supporting Actress

Kelly Preston

Nominated

Worst Picture

Nominated

Worst Director

Bo Welch

Nominated

Worst Screenplay

Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer, based on the book by Dr. Seuss

Nominated

Worst Screen Couple

Mike Myers and either Thing One or Thing Two

Nominated

Worst Excuse for an Actual Movie (All Concept/No Content)

Won

Worst "Comedy" of Our First 25 Years

Nominated

Stinkers Bad Movie Awards[32]

Worst Picture

Won

Worst Director

Bo Welch

Nominated

Worst Screenplay for a Film Grossing More Than $100 Million Worldwide

Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer, based on the book by Dr. Seuss

Won

Worst Actor

Mike Myers

Nominated

Worst Fake Accent - Male

Nominated

Worst Supporting Actor

Alec Baldwin

Nominated

Most Painfully Unfunny Comedy

Nominated

Worst Song

"Fun, Fun, Fun"; music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Wittman

Nominated

Most Annoying Non-Human Character

Cat in the Hat

Won

Thing One and Thing Two (voices by Dan Castellaneta)

Nominated

The Spencer Breslin Award (Worst Performance by a Child Actor)

Spencer Breslin

Won

Dakota Fanning

Nominated

text: The film also received three nominations at the Hollywood Makeup & Hairstylists Guild Awards.[33]

text: Scrapped sequel[edit]

text: On the day of the film's release, Mike Myers stated in an interview that he expected a sequel where the kids meet the Cat again, since there was a sequel to the book. A sequel based on The Cat in the Hat Comes Back was in development, a little more than a month before the film's release.[34] In February 2004, Dr. Seuss' widow, Audrey Geisel, said she would never allow any further live action adaptations of her husband's works, and the sequel was eventually cancelled.[35]

text: Animated version[edit]

text: On March 15, 2012, a computer animated Cat in the Hat adaptation was announced by Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment, following the success of The Lorax.[36][37][38][39][40][41][42] On January 24, 2018, Warner Animation Group announced that they have picked up the rights for the animated Cat in the Hat reboot movie, along with many of Seuss' works.[43]

text: Video game[edit]

text:
The Cat in the Hat
Developer(s)
Magenta Software (PS2, Xbox)Digital Eclipse (Microsoft Windows, Game Boy Advance)Publisher(s)
Vivendi Universal Games[a]Platform(s)

PlayStation 2
Microsoft Windows
Xbox
Game Boy Advance
Release
NA: November 5, 2003 (PS2, Xbox, GBA)NA: November 9, 2003 (PC)EU: March 19, 2004JP: March 25, 2004 (Xbox)Genre(s)
Platform

Action

text: The Cat in the Hat is a 2003 platformer video game released by Vivendi Universal Games and developed by Magenta Software and Digital Eclipse. It is based on the film of the same name. The game was released for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Game Boy Advance on November 5, 2003, and PC on November 9, 2003, shortly before the film's theatrical release. A version for the Nintendo GameCube was planned to be released, but it was later cancelled.

text: Video game reviews[edit]

text: ReceptionAggregate scoresAggregatorScoreGameRankings(Xbox) 52.67%[44](PS2) 50%[45](GBA) 46.50%[46](PC) 19.50%[47]Metacritic(Xbox) 56/100[48](PS2) 56/100[49](GBA) 40/100[50](PC) 40/100[51]Review scoresPublicationScoreFamitsu27/40[52]GameSpot3.8/10[53]GameZone(PC) 8/10[54](PS2) 7.2/10[55](GBA) 5/10[56]IGN6/10[57](GBA) 4/10[58]Nintendo Power2.3/5[59]OPM (US)[60]OXM (US)5.5/10[61]PC Gamer (UK)9%[62]PC Zone30%[63]X-Play[64]

text: The Cat in the Hat game received mixed reviews[44][45][46][48][49][50] (except for the PC version, which received negative reviews).[47][51]


document_title: A Warm December

question_text: who played sidney poitier's daughter in a warm december

question_tokens: who played sidney poitier 's daughter in a warm december

text: A Warm December

text: This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text:
A Warm December

Directed by
Sidney Poitier

Written by
Lawrence Roman

Starring
Sidney Poitier
Esther Anderson

Music by
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson

Edited by
Pembroke J. Herring

Production
company

First Artists

Distributed by
National General Pictures

Release date

May 23, 1973 (1973-05-23)

Running time

101 minutes

Country
United States

Language
English

Box office
$1,600,000 (US/ Canada rentals)[1]

text: A Warm December is a 1973 romance film directed by Sidney Poitier and starring him in the lead role as Dr. Matt Younger. It also starred Jamaican actress Esther Anderson as Catherine, Matt's love interest. Anderson's role of an African princess won her a NAACP Image Award for Best Actress in 1973. It is also notable for an appearance of Letta Mbulu's singing "Nonqonqo" with an African choir, written by Miriam Makeba. Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson wrote and conducted the score.

text: The story was influenced by Roman Holiday and Love Story.[citation needed]

text: Plot[edit]

text: Dr. Matt Younger (Poitier) is a recently widowed American, who takes his daughter (Yvette Curtis) on a month long vacation in London. While there, he meets Catherine (Anderson), the daughter of an African Ambassador (Earl Cameron (actor)). As the pair begin to develop feelings for one another, Dr. Younger learns that the men following Catherine are her bodyguards that protect her, not only because she is the daughter of an important ambassador, but also because she has a Sickle-cell disease. When Dr. Younger proposes, Catherine must decide between love and loyalty to her country.[2]


document_title: List of All England Men's Singles champions

question_text: who won the all england badminton championships for seven years

text: Below is the list of the winners at the All England Open Badminton Championships. Between 1915-1919 the All England was cancelled because of World War I. Between 1940-1946 the All England was cancelled because of World War II.

text:
Year
Champion
Runner-up
Score

1900
 Sydney Howard Smith
 D. Oakes

1901
 H. W. Davies
 Ralph George Watling

1902
 Ralph Watling
 E. Young

1903
 Ralph Watling
 Henry Norman Marrett

1904
 Henry Norman Marrett
 George Alan Thomas

1905
 Henry Norman Marrett
 Ralph George Watling
15-6, 15-2

1906
 Norman Wood
 Henry Norman Marrett
15-8, 18-13

1907
 Norman Wood
 Frank Chesterton

1908
 Henry Norman Marrett
 Arthur M. Cave
12-15, 18-14, 15-9

1909
 Frank Chesterton
 Henry Norman Marrett
15-8, 8-15, 15-10

1910
 Frank Chesterton
 Henry Norman Marrett
15-4, 15-10

1911
 Guy A. Sautter
 J. H. Colin Prior
15-6, 15-11

1912
 Frank Chesterton
 Guy A. Sautter
15-10, 15-13

1913
 Guy A. Sautter
 Frank Chesterton
15-7, 15-8

1914
 Guy A. Sautter
 Frank Chesterton
15-4, 15-10

1915
1919
No competition

1920
 George Alan Thomas
 W. M. Swinden
15-9, 14-17, 15-5

1921
 George Alan Thomas
 Frank Hodge
15-7, 8-15, 15-3

1922
 George Alan Thomas
 Frank Hodge
15-14, 15-5

1923
 George Alan Thomas
 Herbert Uber
15-10, 15-10

1924
 Gordon 'Curly' Mack
 George Alan Thomas
17-15, 9-15, 15–6

1925
 Frank Devlin
 Frank Hodge
11-15, 15-7, 18-15

1926
 Frank Devlin
 Albert Harbot
7-15, 15-5, 15-6

1927
 Frank Devlin
 Albert Harbot
15-3, 15-7

1928
 Frank Devlin
 Albert Harbot
15-10, 15-6

1929
 Frank Devlin
 Donald C. Hume
15-4, 15-1

1930
 Donald C. Hume
 Alan Titherley
15-12, 15-12

1931
 Frank Devlin
 T. P. Dick
3-15, 15-10, 15-3

1932
 Ralph C.F. Nichols
 Raymond White
5-15, 15-11, 18–16

1933
 Raymond White
 Donald C. Hume

1934
 Ralph C.F. Nichols
 T. P. Dick
15-11, 15-8

1935
 Raymond White
 Ralph C. F. Nichols
15-10, 15-7

1936
 Ralph C.F. Nichols
 Raymond White
18–16, 17–18, 15–10

1937
 Ralph C.F. Nichols
 T. P. Dick
15-8, 15-7

1938
 Ralph C.F. Nichols
 Jesper Bie
15-4, 15-5

1939
 Tage Madsen
 Ralph C. F. Nichols
10–15, 18–13, 15–7

1940
1946
No competition

1947
 Conny Jepsen
 Prakash Nath
15-7, 15-11

1948
 Jørn Skaarup
 Poul Holm
15–3, 15–13

1949
 Dave G. Freeman
 Ooi Teik Hock
15–1, 15–6

1950
 Wong Peng Soon
 Poul Holm
15–7, 15–10

1951
 Wong Peng Soon
 Ong Poh Lim
15–18, 18–14, 15–7

1952
 Wong Peng Soon
 Eddy B. Choong
15–11, 18–13

1953
 Eddy B. Choong
 Heah Hock Aun
15–4, 15–4

1954
 Eddy B. Choong
 Donald Smythe
15–5, 15–6

1955
 Wong Peng Soon
 Eddy B. Choong
15–7, 14–17, 15–10

1956
 Eddy B. Choong
 Finn Kobberø
11–15, 15–3, 15–11

1957
 Eddy B. Choong
 Erland Kops
15–9, 15–3

1958
 Erland Kops
 Finn Kobberø
15–10, 8–15, 15–8

1959
 Tan Joe Hok
 Ferry Sonneville
15–8, 10–15, 15–3

1960
 Erland Kops
 Charoen Wattanasin
15–11, 11–15, 15–6

1961
 Erland Kops
 Finn Kobberø
15–10, 15–6

1962
 Erland Kops
 Charoen Wattanasin
15–10, 15–5

1963
 Erland Kops
 Channarong Ratanaseangsuang
15–7, 15–7

1964
 Knud Aage Nielsen
 Henning Borch
8–15, 17–14, 15–4

1965
 Erland Kops
 Tan Aik Huang
15–13, 15–12

1966
 Tan Aik Huang
 Masao Akiyama
15–7, 15–4

1967
 Erland Kops
 Tan Aik Huang
15–12, 15–10

1968
 Rudy Hartono
 Tan Aik Huang
15–12, 15–9

1969
 Rudy Hartono
 Darmadi
15–1, 15–3

1970
 Rudy Hartono
 Svend Pri
15-7, 15-1

1971
 Rudy Hartono
 Muljadi
15-1, 15-5

1972
 Rudy Hartono
 Svend Pri
15-9, 15-4

1973
 Rudy Hartono
 Christian Hadinata
15–4, 15–2

1974
 Rudy Hartono
 Punch Gunalan
8–15, 15–9, 15–10

1975
 Svend Pri
 Rudy Hartono
15–11, 17–14

1976
 Rudy Hartono
 Liem Swie King
15-7, 15-6

1977
 Flemming Delfs
 Liem Swie King
15-18, 15-11, 15-8

1978
 Liem Swie King
 Rudy Hartono
15-10, 15-3

1979
 Liem Swie King
 Flemming Delfs
15-7, 15-8

1980
 Prakash Padukone
 Liem Swie King
15-3, 15-10

1981
 Liem Swie King
 Prakash Padukone
11-15, 15-4, 15-6

1982
 Morten Frost
 Luan Jin
11-15, 15-2, 15-7

1983
 Luan Jin
 Morten Frost
15-2, 13-15, 15-4

1984
 Morten Frost
 Liem Swie King
9-15, 15-10, 15-10

1985
 Zhao Jianhua
 Morten Frost
6-15, 15-10, 18-15

1986
 Morten Frost
 Misbun Sidek
15-2, 15-8

1987
 Morten Frost
 Icuk Sugiarto
15-10, 15-0

1988
 Ib Frederiksen
 Morten Frost
8-15, 15-7, 15-10

1989
 Yang Yang
 Morten Frost
15-6, 15-7

1990
 Zhao Jianhua
 Joko Suprianto
15-4, 15-1

1991
 Ardy Wiranata
 Foo Kok Keong
15-12, 15-10

1992
 Liu Jun
 Zhao Jianhua
15-13, 15-13

1993
 Heryanto Arbi
 Joko Suprianto
15-7, 4-15, 15-11

1994
 Heryanto Arbi
 Ardy Wiranata
15-12, 17-14

1995
 Poul-Erik Høyer Larsen
 Heryanto Arbi
17-16, 15-6

1996
 Poul-Erik Høyer Larsen
 Rashid Sidek
15-7, 15-6

1997
 Dong Jiong
 Sun Jun
15-9, 15-5

1998
 Sun Jun
 Ong Ewe Hock
15-1, 15-7

1999
 Peter Gade
 Taufik Hidayat
15-11, 7-15, 15-10

2000
 Xia Xuanze
 Taufik Hidayat
15-6, 15-13

2001
 Pullela Gopichand
 Chen Hong
15-12, 15-6

2002
 Chen Hong
 Budi Santoso
7-4, 7-5, 7-1

2003
 Muhammad Hafiz Hashim
 Chen Hong
17-14, 15-10

2004
 Lin Dan
 Peter Gade
9-15, 15-5, 15-8

2005
 Chen Hong
 Lin Dan
8-15, 15-5, 15-2

2006
 Lin Dan
 Lee Hyun-il
15-7, 15-7

2007
 Lin Dan
 Chen Yu
21-13, 21-12

2008
 Chen Jin
 Lin Dan
22-20, 25-23

2009
 Lin Dan
 Lee Chong Wei
21-19, 21-12

2010
 Lee Chong Wei
 Kenichi Tago
21-19, 21-19

2011
 Lee Chong Wei
 Lin Dan
21-17, 21-17

2012
 Lin Dan
 Lee Chong Wei
21-19, 6-2

2013
 Chen Long
 Lee Chong Wei
21-17, 21-18

2014
 Lee Chong Wei
 Chen Long
21-13, 21-18

2015
 Chen Long
 Jan O Jorgensen
15–21, 21–17, 21–15

2016
 Lin Dan
 Tian Houwei
21-9, 21-10

2017
 Lee Chong Wei
 Shi Yuqi
21-12, 21-10

text: Number of titles by country[edit]

text:
Rank
Country
No. of Titles

1
 England
24

2
 Denmark
20

3
 China
19

4
 Indonesia
15

5
 Malaysia
14

6
 Ireland
7

7
  Switzerland
3

8
 India
2

9
 Sweden
1

9
 United States
1

text: In 1913 & 1914 Guy Sautter competed under the alias of U.N.Lappin and in 1920 George Thomas played under the alias of George Allen.


document_title: Blue whale

question_text: how big is the mouth of a blue whale

question_tokens: how big is the mouth of a blue whale

text: Blue whale

text: Taxonomy

text: Blue whales are rorquals (family Balaenopteridae), a family that includes the humpback whale, the fin whale, Bryde's whale, the sei whale, and the minke whale.[3] The family Balaenopteridae is believed to have diverged from the other families of the suborder Mysticeti as long ago as the middle Oligocene (28 Ma ago). It is not known when the members of those families diverged from each other.

text: The blue whale is usually classified as one of eight species in the genus Balaenoptera; one authority places it in a separate monotypic genus, Sibbaldus,[12] but this is not accepted elsewhere.[1] DNA sequencing analysis indicates that the blue whale is phylogenetically closer to the sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis) and Bryde's whale (Balaenoptera brydei) than to other Balaenoptera species, and closer to the humpback whale (Megaptera) and the gray whale (Eschrichtius) than to the minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata and Balaenoptera bonaerensis).[13][14] If further research confirms these relationships, it will be necessary to reclassify the rorquals.

text: There have been at least 11 documented cases of blue whale-fin whale hybrid adults in the wild. Arnason and Gullberg describe the genetic distance between a blue and a fin as about the same as that between a human and a gorilla.[15] Researchers working off Fiji believe they photographed a hybrid humpback-blue whale[16] including the discovery through DNA analysis from a meat sample found in a Japanese market.[17][18]

text: The first published description of the blue whale comes from Robert Sibbald's Phalainologia Nova (1694). In September 1692, Sibbald found a blue whale that had stranded in the Firth of Forth – a male 24 m (78 ft) long – that had "black, horny plates" and "two large apertures approaching a pyramid in shape".[6]

text: The specific name musculus is Latin and could mean "muscle", but it can also be interpreted as "little mouse".[19] Carl Linnaeus, who named the species in his seminal Systema Naturae of 1758,[20] would have known this and may have intended the ironic double meaning.[21] Herman Melville called this species "sulphur-bottom" in his novel Moby-Dick (1851) due to an orange-brown or yellow tinge on the underparts from diatom films on the skin. Other common names for the blue whale have included "Sibbald's rorqual" (after Sibbald, who first described the species), the "great blue whale" and the "great northern rorqual". These names have now fallen into disuse. The first known usage of the term "blue whale" was in Melville's Moby-Dick, which only mentions it in passing and does not specifically attribute it to the species in question. The name was really derived from the Norwegian blåhval, coined by Svend Foyn shortly after he had perfected the harpoon gun; the Norwegian scientist G. O. Sars adopted it as the Norwegian common name in 1874.[6]

text: Authorities classify the species into three or four subspecies: B. m. musculus, the northern blue whale consisting of the North Atlantic and North Pacific populations, B. m. intermedia, the southern blue whale of the Southern Ocean, B. m. brevicauda, the pygmy blue whale found in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific,[22] and the more problematic B. m. indica, the great Indian rorqual, which is also found in the Indian Ocean and, although described earlier, may be the same subspecies as B. m. brevicauda.[1]

text: The pygmy blue whale formed from a founder group of Antarctic blue whales about 20,000 years ago, around the Last Glacial Maximum. This is likely because blue whales were driven north by expanding ice, and some have stayed there ever since. The pygmy blue whale's evolutionarily recent origins cause it to have a relatively low genetic diversity.[23]

text: Description

text: The blue whale has a long tapering body that appears stretched in comparison with the stockier build of other whales.[24] The head is flat, U-shaped and has a prominent ridge running from the blowhole to the top of the upper lip.[24] The front part of the mouth is thick with baleen plates; around 300 plates, each around one metre (3.3 feet) long,[24] hang from the upper jaw, running 0.5 m (20 in) back into the mouth. Between 70 and 118 grooves (called ventral pleats) run along the throat parallel to the body length. These pleats assist with evacuating water from the mouth after lunge feeding (see feeding below).

text: The dorsal fin is small;[24] its height averages about 28 centimetres (11 in), and usually ranges between 20 and 40 cm (7.9 and 15.7 in), though it can be as small as 8 cm (3.1 in) or as large as 70 cm (28 in).[25] It is visible only briefly during the dive sequence. Located around three-quarters of the way along the length of the body, it varies in shape from one individual to another; some only have a barely perceptible lump, but others may have prominent and falcate (sickle-shaped) dorsals. When surfacing to breathe, the blue whale raises its shoulder and blowhole out of the water to a greater extent than other large whales, such as the fin or sei whales. Observers can use this trait to differentiate between species at sea. Some blue whales in the North Atlantic and North Pacific raise their tail fluke when diving. When breathing, the whale emits a vertical single-column spout, typically 9 metres (30 ft) high, but reaching up to 12 metres (39 ft). Its lung capacity is 5,000 litres (1,300 US gal). Blue whales have twin blowholes shielded by a large splashguard.[24]

text: The flippers are 3–4 metres (9.8–13.1 ft) long. The upper sides are grey with a thin white border; the lower sides are white. The head and tail fluke are generally uniformly grey. The whale's upper parts, and sometimes the flippers, are usually mottled. The degree of mottling varies substantially from individual to individual. Some may have a uniform slate-grey color, but others demonstrate a considerable variation of dark blues, greys and blacks, all tightly mottled.[3]

text: Blue whales can reach speeds of 50 kilometres per hour (31 mph) over short bursts, usually when interacting with other whales, but 20 kilometres per hour (12 mph) is a more typical traveling speed.[3] Satellite telemetry of Australian pygmy blue whales migrating to Indonesia has shown that they cover between 0.09 and 455.8 kilometers (0.056 and 283.221 miles) per day.[26] When feeding, they slow down to 5 kilometres per hour (3.1 mph).

text: Blue whales typically swim at a depth of about 13 meters (43 feet) when migrating in order to eliminate drag from surface waves. The deepest confirmed dive is 506 meters (1,660 feet).[27]

text: Blue whales most commonly live alone or with one other individual. It is not known how long traveling pairs stay together. In locations where there is a high concentration of food, as many as 50 blue whales have been seen scattered over a small area. They do not form the large, close-knit groups seen in other baleen species.

text: Size

text: The blue whale is the largest animal known to have ever lived.[5][6]

text: Blue whales are difficult to weigh because of their size. They were never weighed whole, but cut into blocks 0.5–0.6 meters (1.6–2.0 ft) across and weighed by parts.[28] This caused a considerable loss of blood and body fluids, estimated to be about 6% of the total weight.[29] As a whole, blue whales from the Northern Atlantic and Pacific are smaller on average than those from Antarctic waters. Adult weights typically range from 45–136 tonnes (50–150 short tons).[30] There is some uncertainty about the biggest blue whale ever found, as most data came from blue whales killed in Antarctic waters during the first half of the twentieth century, which were collected by whalers not well-versed in standard zoological measurement techniques. The standard measuring technique is to measure in a straight line from the upper jaw to the notch in the tail flukes. This came about because the edges of the tail flukes were typically cut off, and the lower jaw often falls open upon death. Many of the larger whales in the whaling records (especially those over 100 ft (30.5 m)) were probably measured incorrectly or even deliberately exaggerated.[6] The heaviest weight ever reported was 173 metric tons (190 short tons);[4][31] for a southern hemisphere female in 1947,[4] it is likely that the largest blue whales would have weighed over 200 short tons (181 t).[6] The longest whales ever recorded were two females measuring 33.6 and 33.3 metres (110 and 109 ft), but in neither of these cases was the piecemeal weight gathered.[32] Possibly the largest recorded male was killed near the South Shetland Islands in 1926 and was measured at 31.7 m (104 ft).[33]

text: Females are generally a few feet longer than males. However, males may be slightly heavier on average than females of the same length, owing to heavier muscles and bones.[28] Verified measurements rarely exceed 28 metres (92 ft). The longest measured by Macintosh and Wheeler (1929) was a female 28.5 metres (94 ft), while the largest male was 26.45 metres (86.8 ft);[25] one of the same authors later found a male of 26.65 metres (87.4 ft) and stated that those lengths may be exceeded.[34] The longest whale measured by scientists was 29.9 metres (98 ft) long.[4] Lieut. Quentin R. Walsh, USCG, while acting as whaling inspector of the factory ship Ulysses, verified the measurement of a 29.9 m (98 ft) pregnant blue whale caught in the Antarctic in the 1937–38 season.[35] A 26.8 metres (88 ft) male was verified by Japanese scientists in the 1947–48 whaling season.[36] The longest reported in the North Pacific was a 27.1 metres (89 ft) female taken by Japanese whalers in 1959, and the longest reported in the North Atlantic was a 28 metres (92 ft) female caught in the Davis Strait.[6] The average weight of the longest scientifically verified specimens (29.9 metres (98 ft)) would be calculated to be 176.5 tonnes (194.6 tons), varying from 141 tonnes (155.4 tons) to 211.5 tonnes (233.1 tons) depending on fat condition.[29][37] One study found that a hypothetical 33 metres (108 ft) blue whale would be too large to exist in real life, due to metabolic and energy constraints.[38]

text: Due to its large size, several organs of the blue whale are the largest in the animal kingdom. A blue whale's tongue weighs around 2.7 tonnes (3.0 short tons)[39] and, when fully expanded, its mouth is large enough to hold up to 90 tonnes (99 short tons) of food and water.[8] Despite the size of its mouth, the dimensions of its throat are such that a blue whale cannot swallow an object wider than a beach ball.[40] The heart of an average sized blue whale weighs 400 pounds (180 kg) and is the largest known in any animal.[41] During the first seven months of its life, a blue whale calf drinks approximately 380 litres (100 US gal) of milk every day. Blue whale calves gain weight quickly, as much as 90 kilograms (200 lb) every 24 hours. Even at birth, they weigh up to 2,700 kilograms (5,950 lb)—the same as a fully grown hippopotamus.[3] Blue whales have proportionally small brains, only about 6.92 kilograms (15.26 lb), about 0.007% of its body weight,[42] although with a highly convoluted cerebral cortex.[33] The blue whale penis is the largest penis of any living organism[43] and also set the Guinness World Record as the longest of any animal's.[44] The reported average length varies but is usually mentioned to have an average length of 2.4 to 3.0 m (8 to 10 ft).[45]

text: Behaviour

text: Feeding

text: Blue whales feed almost exclusively on krill, though they also take small numbers of copepods.[46] The species of this zooplankton eaten by blue whales varies from ocean to ocean. In the North Atlantic, Meganyctiphanes norvegica, Thysanoessa raschii, Thysanoessa inermis and Thysanoessa longicaudata are the usual food;[47][48][49] in the North Pacific, Euphausia pacifica, Thysanoessa inermis, Thysanoessa longipes, Thysanoessa spinifera, Nyctiphanes symplex and Nematoscelis megalops;[50][51][52] and in the Southern Hemisphere, Euphausia superba, Euphausia crystallorophias, Euphausia valentini, and Nyctiphanes australis.

text: An adult blue whale can eat up to 40 million krill in a day.[53] The whales always feed in the areas with the highest concentration of krill, sometimes eating up to 3,600 kilograms (7,900 lb) of krill in a single day.[46] The daily energy requirement of an adult blue whale is in the region of 1.5 million kilocalories (6.3 GJ).[54] Their feeding habits are seasonal. Blue whales gorge on krill in the rich waters of the Antarctic before migrating to their breeding grounds in the warmer, less-rich waters nearer the equator. The blue whale can take in up to 90 times as much energy as it expends, allowing it to build up considerable energy reserves.[55][56][57]

text: Because krill move, blue whales typically feed at depths of more than 100 metres (330 ft) during the day and only surface-feed at night. Dive times are typically 10 minutes when feeding, though dives of up to 21 minutes are possible. The whale feeds by lunging forward at groups of krill, taking the animals and a large quantity of water into its mouth. The water is then squeezed out through the baleen plates by pressure from the ventral pouch and tongue. Once the mouth is clear of water, the remaining krill, unable to pass through the plates, are swallowed. The blue whale also incidentally consumes small fish, crustaceans and squid caught up with krill.[58][59]

text: Life history

text: Mating starts in late autumn and continues to the end of winter.[60] Little is known about mating behaviour or breeding grounds. In the fall, males will follow females for prolonged periods of time. Occasionally, a second male will attempt to displace the first, and the whales will race each other at high speed, ranging from 17 miles per hour (27 km/h) to 20 miles per hour (32 km/h) in New Zealand. This often causes the racing whales to breach, which is rare in blue whales. This racing behavior may even escalate to physical violence between the males. Scientists have observed this behavior in multiple parts of the world, including the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada and the South Taranaki Bight in New Zealand.[6][61]

text: Females typically give birth once every two to three years at the start of the winter after a gestation period of 10 to 12 months.[60] The calf weighs about 2.5 tonnes (2.8 short tons) and is around 7 metres (23 ft) in length. Blue whale calves drink 380–570 litres (100–150 U.S. gallons) of milk a day. Blue whale milk has an energy content of about 18,300 kJ/kg (4,370 kcal/kg).[62] The calf is weaned after six months, by which time it has doubled in length. The first video of a calf thought to be nursing was filmed on 5 February 2016.[63]

text: Sexual maturity is typically reached at five to ten years of age. In the Northern Hemisphere, whaling records show that males averaged 20–21 m (66–69 ft) and females 21–23 m (69–75 ft) at sexual maturity,[64] while in the Southern Hemisphere it was 22.6 and 24 m (74 and 79 ft), respectively.[65] In the Northern Hemisphere, as adults, males averaged 24 m (79 ft) and females 25 m (82 ft) with average calculated weights of 90.5 and 101.5 tonnes (100 and 112 tons), respectively.[29] Blue whales in the eastern North Pacific population were found to be on average 0.91 meters (3.0 feet) shorter,[66] therefore with males averaging 23.3 meters (76 feet) and 80.5 tonnes (88.5 tons) and females 24 meters (79 feet) and 90.5 tonnes (100 tons).[29] Antarctic males averaged 25 m (82 ft) and females 26.2 m (86 ft),[37][64][65] averaging 101.5 and 118 tonnes (112 and 130 tons).[29] Pygmy blue whales average 19.2 meters (63 feet) at sexual maturity, with males averaging 21 meters and females 22 meters (69 and 72 feet) when fully grown,[67] averaging 76 and 90 tonnes (83.5 and 99 tons).[29]

text: In the eastern North Pacific, photogrammetric studies have shown sexually mature (but not necessarily fully grown) blue whales today average 21.7 m (71 ft), and about 65.5 tonnes (72 tons)[29] with the largest found being about 24.5 m (80 ft).[68] A 26.5 m (87 ft) female washed ashore near Pescadero, California in 1979.[69]

text: The weight of individual blue whales varies significantly according to fat condition. Antarctic blue whales gain 50% of their lean body weight in the summer feeding season, i.e. a blue whale entering the Antarctic weighing 100 tons would leave weighing 150 tons. Pregnant females probably gain 60–65%. The fattened weight is 120% the average weight and the lean weight is 80%.[37]

text: Scientists estimate that blue whales can live for at least 80 years,[32][60][70] but since individual records do not date back into the whaling era, this will not be known with certainty for many years. The longest recorded study of a single individual is 34 years, in the eastern North Pacific.[71]

text: The whales' only natural predator is the orca.[72] Studies report that as many as 25% of mature blue whales have scars resulting from orca attacks.[32] The mortality rate of such attacks is unknown.

text: Strandings

text: Blue whale strandings are extremely uncommon, and, because of the species' social structure, mass strandings are unheard of.[73] When strandings do occur, they can become the focus of public interest. In 1920, a blue whale washed up near Bragar on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. It had been shot by whalers, but the harpoon had failed to explode. As with other mammals, the fundamental instinct of the whale was to try to carry on breathing at all costs, even though this meant beaching to prevent itself from drowning. Two of the whale's bones were erected just off a main road on Lewis and remain a tourist attraction.[74]

text: In June 2015, a female blue whale estimated at 12.2 meters (40 feet) and 20 tonnes (22 tons) was stranded on a beach in Maharashtra, India, the first live stranding in the region. Despite efforts by the Albaug forest department and local fishermen, the whale died 10 hours after being stranded.[75] In August 2009, a wounded blue whale was stranded in a bay in Steingrímsfjördur, Iceland. The first rescue attempt failed, as the whale (thought to be over 20 meters long) towed the >20 ton boat back to shore at speeds of up to 7 miles per hour (11 km/h). The whale was towed to sea after 7 hours by a stronger boat. It is unknown whether it survived.[76] In December 2015, a live blue whale thought to be over 20 metres (66 feet) long was rescued from a beach in Chile.[77] Another stranded blue whale, thought to be about 12.2 metres (40 feet) long, was rescued in India in February 2016.[78] Boats were used in all successful cases.

text: Vocalizations

text:
Multimedia relating to the blue whale
Note that the whale calls have been sped up 10x from their original speed.

A blue whale song

Recorded in the Atlantic (1)

A blue whale song

Recorded in the Atlantic (2)

A blue whale song

Recorded in the Atlantic (3)

A blue whale song

Recorded in North Eastern Pacific

A blue whale song

Recorded in the South Pacific

A blue whale song

Recorded in the West Pacific

Problems playing these files? See media help.

text: Estimates made by Cummings and Thompson (1971) suggest the source level of sounds made by blue whales are between 155 and 188 decibels when measured relative to a reference pressure of one micropascal at one metre.[79][80] All blue whale groups make calls at a fundamental frequency between 10 and 40 Hz; the lowest frequency sound a human can typically perceive is 20 Hz. Blue whale calls last between ten and thirty seconds. Blue whales off the coast of Sri Lanka have been repeatedly recorded making "songs" of four notes, lasting about two minutes each, reminiscent of the well-known humpback whale songs. As this phenomenon has not been seen in any other populations, researchers believe it may be unique to the B. m. brevicauda (pygmy) subspecies. The loudest sustained noise from a blue whale was at 188 dB.[81]

text: The purpose of vocalization is unknown. Richardson et al. (1995) discuss six possible reasons:[82]

text:
Maintenance of inter-individual distance
Species and individual recognition
Contextual information transmission (for example feeding, alarm, courtship)
Maintenance of social organization (for example contact calls between females and males)
Location of topographic features
Location of prey resources

tag: ol

text: Population and whaling

text: Hunting era

text: Blue whales are not easy to catch or kill. Their speed and power meant that they were rarely pursued by early whalers, who instead targeted sperm and right whales.[83] In 1864, the Norwegian Svend Foyn equipped a steamboat with harpoons specifically designed for catching large whales.[3] The harpoon gun was initially cumbersome and had a low success rate, but Foyn perfected it, and soon several whaling stations were established on the coast of Finnmark in northern Norway. Because of disputes with the local fishermen, the last whaling station in Finnmark was closed down in 1904.

text: Soon, blue whales were being hunted off Iceland (1883), the Faroe Islands (1894), Newfoundland (1898), and Spitsbergen (1903). In 1904–05 the first blue whales were taken off South Georgia. By 1925, with the advent of the stern slipway in factory ships and the use of steam-driven whale catchers, the catch of blue whales, and baleen whales as a whole, in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic began to increase dramatically. In the 1930–31 season, these ships caught 29,400 blue whales in the Antarctic alone.[84] By the end of World War II, populations had been significantly depleted, and, in 1946, the first quotas restricting international trade in whales were introduced, but they were ineffective because of the lack of differentiation between species. Rare species could be hunted on an equal footing with those found in relative abundance.

text: Arthur C. Clarke, in his 1962 book Profiles of the Future, was the first prominent intellectual to call attention to the plight of the blue whale. He mentioned its large brain and said, "we do not know the true nature of the entity we are destroying."[85]

text: All of the historical coastal Asian groups were driven to near-extinction in short order by Japanese industrial hunts.[86] Those groups that once migrated along western Japan to the East China Sea were likely wiped out much earlier, as the last catches on Amami Oshima were between the 1910s and the 1930s,[87] and the last known stranding records on the Japanese archipelago, excluding the Ryukyu Islands, were over a half-century ago. Commercial catches were continued until 1965 and whaling stations targeting blues were mainly placed along the Hokkaido and Sanriku coasts.[86]

text: Blue whale hunting was banned in 1966 by the International Whaling Commission,[88][89] and illegal whaling by the Soviet Union finally halted in the 1970s,[90] by which time 330,000 blue whales had been caught in the Antarctic, 33,000 in the rest of the Southern Hemisphere, 8,200 in the North Pacific, and 7,000 in the North Atlantic. The largest original population, in the Antarctic, had been reduced to a mere 360 individuals, about 0.15% of their initial numbers.[10]

text: Population and distribution today

text: Since the introduction of the whaling ban, studies have examined whether the conservation reliant global blue whale population is increasing or remaining stable. In the Antarctic, best estimates show an increase of 7.3% per year since the end of illegal Soviet whaling, but numbers remain at under 1% of their original levels.[10] Recovery varies regionally, and the Eastern North Pacific blue whale population (historically a relatively small proportion of the global total) has rebounded to about 2,200 individuals, an estimated 97% of its pre-hunting population.[91]

text: The total world population was estimated to be between 5,000 and 12,000 in 2002; there are high levels of uncertainty in available estimates for many areas.[4] A more recent estimate by the IUCN puts the global population at 10,000–25,000.[9]

text: The IUCN Red List counts the blue whale as "endangered", as it has since the list's inception. In the United States, the National Marine Fisheries Service lists them as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.[92] The largest known concentration, consisting of about 2,800 individuals, is the northeast Pacific population of the northern blue whale (B. m. musculus) subspecies that ranges from Alaska to Costa Rica, but is most commonly seen from California in summer.[93] Infrequently, this population visits the northwest Pacific between Kamchatka and the northern tip of Japan.

text: North Atlantic

text: In the North Atlantic, two stocks of B. m. musculus are recognised. The first is found off Greenland, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. This group is estimated to total about 500. The second, more easterly group is spotted from the Azores in spring to Iceland in July and August; it is presumed the whales follow the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between the two volcanic islands. Beyond Iceland, blue whales have been spotted as far north as Spitsbergen and Jan Mayen, though such sightings are rare. Scientists do not know where these whales spend their winters. The total North Atlantic population is estimated to be between 600 and 1,500. Off Ireland, the first confirmed sightings were made in 2008,[94] since then Porcupine Seabight has been regarded as a prominent habitat for the species along with fin whales. One was sighted along Galicia, Spain, in 2017.[95]

text: Occasionally blue whales get lost in the Baltic Sea. The remnants of two blue whales have been identified in Finland.[96] One 19-meter skeleton was found on the bottom of the Gulf of Finland during the construction of Nord Stream pipeline.[97] The vertebrae of a second individual were recovered from a field near Pori on the coast of the Bothnian Sea in 1942 and identified in the Copenhagen Zoological Museum by Magnus Degerbøl.[96] Radiocarbon dating revealed the former had wondered into the Littorina Sea over 7000 years ago and perished, while the latter bones were shown to be 800–900 years old.[98]

text: North Pacific

text: Five or more subpopulations have been suggested, and several of these mainly in the western North Pacific have been considered either functionally or virtually extinct.[99] Of the populations that once existed off coastal Japan, the last recorded confirmed stranding was in the 1910s.[100] Today, call types suggest only two populations in the North Pacific.[6] Some scientists regard that historical populations off Japan were driven to extinction by whaling activities, mostly from the Kumanonada Sea off Wakayama, in the Gulf of Tosa, and in the Sea of Hyūga. Nowadays, possible vagrants from either eastern or offshore populations are observed on very rare occasions off Kushiro.[101] There were also small, but constant catch records around the Korean Peninsula and in the coastal waters of the Sea of Japan; this species is normally considered not to frequent into marginal seas, such as the Sea of Okhotsk, on usual migrations. Whales were known to migrate further north to eastern Kamchatka, the Gulf of Anadyr, off Abashiri or the southern Sea of Okhotsk,[102] and the Commander Islands. Only three sightings were made between 1994 and 2004 in Russia[103] with one sighted off east coast of the peninsula in 2009,[104] and the last known occurrence in the eastern Sea of Okhotsk was in 1948.[105] In addition, whales have not been confirmed off the Commander Islands for over past 80 years.[106] In 2017, 13 or more whales were observed off Kamchatka and Commander Islands.[107][108][104] Historically, wintering grounds existed off the Hawaiian Archipelago, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Bonin Islands and Ryukyu Islands, the Philippines, Taiwan, the Zhoushan Archipelago, and the South China Sea[109] such as in Daya Bay, off the Leizhou Peninsula, and off Hainan Island, and further south to the Paracel Islands.[110] A stranding was recorded in Wanning in 2005.[111] One whale was sighted off Weizhou Island in 2017.[112] For further status in Chinese and Korean waters, see Wildlife of China.

text: As of 2014, the eastern North Pacific blue whale population had rebounded to an estimated 2,200 individuals, which is thought to be about 97% of its pre-whaling numbers.[11]

text: Southern Hemisphere and vicinity to Northern Indian Ocean

text: In the Southern Hemisphere, there appear to be two distinct subspecies, B. m. intermedia, the Antarctic blue whale, and the little-studied pygmy blue whale, B. m. brevicauda, found in Indian Ocean waters. The most recent surveys (midpoint 1998) provided an estimate of 2,280 blue whales in the Antarctic[113] (of which fewer than 1% are likely to be pygmy blue whales).[114] Estimates from a 1996 survey show that 424 pygmy blue whales were in a small area south of Madagascar (the Madagascar Plateau)[115] alone,[116] thus it is likely that numbers in the entire Indian Ocean are in the thousands. If this is true, the global numbers would be much higher than estimates predict.[117] However, slower reproduction rate of the species, along with the impacts of whaling, may affect population recoveries as the total population size is predicted to be at less than 50% of its pre-whaling state by 2100.[118]

text: Several congregating grounds are recently confirmed in Oceania, such as Perth Canyon off Rottnest Island, the Great Australian Bight off Portland, and in South Taranaki Bight and off Kahurangi Point[119] which was discovered just in 2007 and was confirmed in 2014, representing possibly a unique population based on haplotypes.[120][121] Southern blue and pygmy blue females use waters off Western Australia, and coastal areas of eastern North Island of New Zealand, from Northland waters such as the Bay of Islands and Hauraki Gulf to the Bay of Plenty in the south, as breeding and calving grounds. Whales off southern and western Australia are known to migrate into tropical coastal waters in Indonesia,[122] Philippines,[123] and off East Timor.[124] (Animals in the Philippines may or may not originate from North Pacific populations or from a pygmy blue population in the northern Indian Ocean as whales regularly appear off Bohol,[125] north of the Equator.[126][127]) At least on occasions, whales also migrate through remote islands such as Cook Islands,[128][129][130] and Chilean pelagic waters adjacent to Easter Island and Isla Salas y Gómez, where possibilities of undiscovered wintering grounds have been considered.[131]

text: Blue whales also migrate through western African waters such as off Angola[132][133] and Mauritania,[134] and at least whales around Iceland are known to migrate to Mauritania.[135]

text: Subspecies' distribution

text: A fourth subspecies, B. m. indica, was identified by Blyth in 1859 in the northern Indian Ocean, but is now thought to be the same subspecies as B. m. brevicauda, the pygmy blue whale. Records for Soviet catches seem to indicate that the female adult size is closer to that of the pygmy blue than B. m. musculus; the populations of B. m. indica and B. m. brevicauda appear to be discrete, and the breeding seasons differ by almost six months.[136] Along mainland Indian coasts, appearances of whales had been scarce excluding unconfirmed record(s),[137] the first blue whale since after the last stranding record in Maharashtra in 1914, was sighted off Kunkeshwar along with several Bryde's whales in May 2015.[138][139][140]

text: Migratory patterns of these subspecies are not well known. For example, pygmy blue whales have been recorded in the northern Indian Ocean (Oman, Maldives and Sri Lanka),[141] where they may form a distinct resident population.[136] Furthermore, sightings have been recorded from elsewhere in and adjacent to Arabian Sea, including from Gulf of Aden, Persian Gulf, coasts of Bay of Bengal including Bangladesh to Myanmar, and within the Strait of Malacca.[142][143] The first official confirmation within Thailand's EEZ occurred at Trang in 2013.[144]

text: In addition, the population of blue whales occurring off Chile and Peru may also be a distinct subspecies. Some Antarctic blue whales approach the eastern South Atlantic coast in winter, and occasionally, their vocalizations are heard off Peru, Western Australia, and in the northern Indian Ocean.[136] In Chile, the Cetacean Conservation Center, with support from the Chilean Navy, is undertaking extensive research and conservation work on a recently discovered feeding aggregation of the species off the coast of Chiloe Island in the Gulf of Corcovado (Chiloé National Park), where 326 blue whales were spotted in 2007.[145] In this regions, it is normal for blue whales to enter Fiords. Whales also reach southern Los Lagos, such as off Caleta Zorra, live along with other rorquals.

text: Efforts to calculate the blue whale population more accurately are supported by marine mammologists at Duke University, who maintain the Ocean Biogeographic Information System—Spatial Ecological Analysis of Megavertebrate Populations (OBIS-SEAMAP), a collation of marine mammal sighting data from around 130 sources.[146]

text: Threats other than hunting

text: Due to their enormous size, power and speed, adult blue whales have virtually no natural predators. There is one documented case in National Geographic Magazine of a blue whale being attacked by orcas off the Baja California Peninsula; the orcas were unable to kill the animal outright during their attack, but the blue whale sustained serious wounds and probably died as a result of them shortly after the attack.[148] In March 2014, a pack of orcas harassed a blue whale off California, with one of them biting the tip of the blue whale's tail fluke. The blue whale attempted to tail slap the orca and fled at high speed.[149] A similar incident happened on May 18, 2017 in Monterey Bay, with the orcas swimming in a line up to the blue whale's side. The blue whale fled and escaped. Orcas have virtually no chance against an adult blue whale, but may attack them on occasion anyway for their own enjoyment.[150] Up to a quarter of the blue whales identified in Baja bear scars from orca attacks.[6]

text: Blue whales may be wounded, sometimes fatally, after colliding with ocean vessels, as well as becoming trapped or entangled in fishing gear.[151] Ship strikes in particular have killed many blue whales in California.[152] In September 2007, three dead blue whales washed up in southern California after being killed by ship strikes.[6] A similar incident occurred in northern California in 2017, possibly also 2010.[153][154] Ship strikes are also a serious problem in Sri Lanka, and scientists believe this problem could be nearly eliminated by moving the shipping lanes 15 nautical miles to the south.[155] The ever-increasing amount of ocean noise, including sonar, drowns out the vocalizations produced by whales, which makes it harder for them to communicate.[147][151] Blue whales stop producing foraging D calls once a mid-frequency sonar is activated, even though the sonar frequency range (1–8 kHz) far exceeds their sound production range (25–100 Hz).[147] Research on blue whales in the Southern California Bight has shown that mid-frequency sonar use interferes with foraging behavior, sometimes causing the whales to abandon their feeding.[156] Human threats to the potential recovery of blue whale populations also include accumulation of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) chemicals within the whale's body.[8]

text: With global warming causing glaciers and permafrost to melt rapidly and allowing a large amount of fresh water to flow into the oceans, there are concerns that if the amount of fresh water in the oceans reaches a critical point, there will be a disruption in the thermohaline circulation.[157] Considering the blue whale's migratory patterns are based on ocean temperature, a disruption in this circulation, which moves warm and cold water around the world, would be likely to have an effect on their migration.[158] The whales summer in the cool, high latitudes, where they feed in krill-abundant waters; they winter in warmer, low latitudes, where they mate and give birth.[159]

text: The change in ocean temperature would also affect the blue whale's food supply. The warming trend and decreased salinity levels would cause a significant shift in krill location and abundance.[160]

text: In popular culture

text: Before modern whaling began in the late 19th century, blue whales were obscure and very poorly understood. They, along with other large whales were mythologized and indistinguishable from sea monsters. Even after the first specimens were described, the blue whale went by many names and scientists often described their specimens as new species. Descriptions and illustrations were inaccurate. The taxonomy was eventually resolved, but many mysteries remained.[6][33]

text: The blue whale rose from relative obscurity in the 1970s, after the release of the Songs of the Humpback Whale. The difference between the humpback and the blue whale was not well known to most people, who conflated the species in their minds. To many listeners, the haunting songs seemed like a cry for help. Environmentalists developed the image of a lonely blue whale singing out in an empty ocean, since whalers had nearly hunted the species to extinction.[6]

text: Today, the blue whale is renowned for being the largest animal ever to have lived. In part because of its legendary status, many misconceptions still exist. For example, its size is often exaggerated. Many popular sources give the maximum length as 110 feet (34 meters) or more. While such lengths were reported in the whaling records, they were not scientifically verified and were probably exaggerated. Virtually all books and articles that mention the blue whale claim that it can reach 100 feet (30 meters). This is probably true (the largest verified specimen was 29.9 meters, 98 feet[4] but is highly misleading as the average size is much smaller.[6][161]

text: The global population was reduced by more than 99% during the 20th century.[162] Most of this was in the Antarctic, which had been reduced to 360 individuals or about 0.15% of their original numbers; other populations were not as badly depleted. The Antarctic blue whale population is growing at the relatively rapid rate of about 7.3% per year, but it was hunted to such a low level that it remains at a tiny fraction of pre-whaling numbers.[10] The global population still requires protection, but it is not in immediate danger of extinction.[6]

text: Other myths and misconceptions include that the blue whale's arteries can be swum through, that the heartbeat can be heard from 19 miles away, and that the blue whale penis is 16 feet long.[6]

text: Museums

text: The Natural History Museum in London contains a famous mounted skeleton and life-size model of a blue whale, which were both the first of their kind in the world, but have since been replicated at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Similarly, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City has a full-size model in its Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life. A juvenile blue whale skeleton named KOBO is installed at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

text: The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California, features a life-size model of a mother blue whale with her calf suspended from the ceiling of its main hall.[163] The Beaty Biodiversity Museum at the University of British Columbia, Canada, houses a display of a blue whale skeleton (skull is cast replica) directly on the main campus boulevard.[164] A real skeleton of a blue whale at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa was also unveiled in May 2010.[165] The Royal Ontario Museum obtained a blue whale, which died in Newfoundland and Labrador in 2014, and began an exhibition in 2016 to display its skeleton in Toronto.[166]

text: The Museum of Natural History in Gothenburg, Sweden, contains the only stuffed blue whale in the world, with its skeleton mounted beside it. Two skeletons are held in Ukraine: in Odessa and Kherson.[167]

text: The Melbourne Museum and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa[168] both feature a skeleton of the pygmy blue whale. The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, North Carolina, has a mounted skeleton of a blue whale.

text: The South African Museum in Cape Town features a hall devoted to whales and natural history known as the Whale Well. The centrepiece of the exhibit is a suspended mounted blue whale skeleton, from the carcass of a partially mature specimen that washed ashore in the mid 1980s. The skeleton's jaw bones are mounted on the floor of Whale Well to permit visitors direct contact with them, and to walk between them so as to appreciate the size of the animal. Other mounted skeletons include that of a humpback whale and a right whale, together with in-scale composite models of other whales, dolphins and porpoises.

text: The Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park displays a life-sized model of a blue whale in the front. Several other institutions such as Tokai University and Taiji Whale Museum hold skeletons or skeleton models of Pygmy blue whales, while several churches and buildings in western Japan including Nagasaki Prefecture display the jawbone of captured animals as a gate.

text: Whale-watching

text: Blue whales may be encountered (but rarely) on whale-watching cruises in the Gulf of Maine[169] and are the main attractions along the north shore of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and in the Saint Lawrence estuary.[151] Blue whales can also be seen off Southern California, starting as early as March and April, with the peak between July and September.[170] More whales have been observed close to shore along with fin whales.

text: In Chile, the Alfaguara project combines conservation measures for the population of blue whales feeding off Chiloé Island with whale watching and other ecotourism activities that bring economic benefits to the local people.[171] Whale-watching, principally blue whales, is also carried out south of Sri Lanka.[172] Whales are widely seen along the coast of Chile and Peru near the coast, occasionally making mixed groups with fin, sei, and Bryde's whales.

text: In Australia, pygmy blue and Antarctic blue whales have been observed from various tours in almost all the coastlines of the continent. Among these, tours with sightings likely the highest rate are on west coast such as in Geographe Bay[173] and in southern bight off Portland. For later, special tours to observe pygmy blues by helicopters are organized.[174]

text: In New Zealand, whales have been seen in many areas close to shore, most notably around the Northland coast, in the Hauraki Gulf and the Bay of Plenty.[175]